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AG closes case in deadly 2012 Chesterfield shooting

By MEGHAN PIERCEUnion Leader Correspondent

CHESTERFIELD — The Attorney General’s Office has closed its investigation into a 2012 shooting death involving two Hinsdale men.

“Based on the investigation conducted, on April 14, 2012, it is clear that Douglas Farr shot and killed victim Mark McAuley. There are no other suspects in the case, and today no other person is being sought in connection with the homicide of Mark McAuley,” states the final report released Thursday by Attorney General Joseph A. Foster and New Hampshire State Police Col. Robert L. Quinn.

Whether Farr, 30, shot McAuley, 39, in self-defense — as he claimed — remains undetermined. Farr died in a car crash in May 2013, Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley said.

Investigators carried on the investigation long after the car crash because they wanted to provide the victim’s family with as many answers as possible, Hinckley said.

According to the report, around 1 p.m., April 14, 2012, Hinsdale police received a call from Farr’s mother Monica Burdette, who reported she could not find her son, and that he was “upset.”

Just before 2:30 p.m., Chesterfield police went to North Hinsdale Road in response to a 911 call that a man had been shot. The officer found Farr, his mother, and Farr’s fiancée, Erin Brault, in a vehicle. Burdette and Brault said they found Farr on North Hinsdale Road. He had a gunshot wound to his shoulder, and was crying, according to the report.

Farr told police “there was another guy in the woods” who he had shot and killed.

“A .40-caliber pistol and a loaded magazine were inside the automobile with the suspect. That weapon belonged to the suspect,” the report said.

Officers found Mark McAuley’s body in the woods nearby.

“The autopsy revealed that the victim had been shot six times,” the report states.

Hinckley said Farr gave investigators a confusing, convoluted story.

“His story was basically that the victim pulled the gun on him and shot him and he was able to get free and turn and shoot the victim who was coming at him with a knife,” Hinckley said. “His claim to motive as to why the victim would shoot him was unclear to us.”

Erin Brault was the only material witness in the case, the report states.

In May 2013, Farr, then 32, and Brault, 35, also of Hinsdale, died in a fiery crash on Route 12 in Keene. The Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the deaths of both an accident and the cause to be multiple blunt-force trauma injuries.